Ajit Randeniya

The international and local enemies of Sri Lanka who tried their “ƒ”¹…”best’ and devious methods to divide the territory of Sri Lanka through the LTTE have not yet accepted that they failed. They are looking for new opportunities to achieve the same aim.

There is nothing new of course, in the international meddlers applying “ƒ”¹…”pressure’ through baseless and fabricated allegations of “ƒ”¹…”human rights abuses’ and other horrible crimes and threats of trade sanctions. Hilary Clinton gave voice to a feed by the conspirators in the US State Department and the “ƒ”¹…”colonisers club’ in Brussels, otherwise known as the European Union is threatening to lift their trade “ƒ”¹…”concessions’ to Sri Lanka.

There are other sub-plots underneath these grand strategies, including the desperate attempt to divide the government and its supporters, most notably to persuade General Sarath Fonseka to step in to the gutter with such desperados as Ranil Wickremesinghe and Mangala Samaraweera, the same people who ridiculed General Fonseka and the army during the war!

Other plots involve the use of local elements to good measure and the continued use of destabilisation by international agents entering the country and working as “ƒ”¹…”journalists’. As the leading local agent, the religious fundamentalist cult at “ƒ”¹…”The Sunday Leader’ is reporting death threats by the truckload. The sensationalist headline “ƒ”¹…”Now they are coming for us’ has become the masthead of the rag.

If these reports of death threats are true, the prospective killers of the cult must be the stupidest killing squad in the world. Unlike the usual method of such outfits of “ƒ”¹…”paying a visit’ to their targets at the dead of the night, these particular goons seem to keep on telegraphing their punches without any sign of intending to ever follow-up!

Any intended effect of the threats, as well as their reporting has worn out a long time ago! Notwithstanding that people like to the extremely precious Editor of the Leader Frederica Jansz keeps on drivelling about the “ƒ”¹…”courage’ they are displaying in the face of such “ƒ”¹…”threats’.

Then we have the foreign variety of the subterranean life who visit the country as “ƒ”¹…”journalists’, but in reality they are there to cultivate contacts among the disaffected or the religiously and ethnically disparate groups. Then they sent home detailed “ƒ”¹…”analyses’ of the social, political and economic background of the country, labelled as “ƒ”¹…”news’.

A report written just last weekend by Amanda Hodge, described as the South Asia correspondent for the Rupert Murdoch owned “ƒ”¹…”The Australian’ newspaper and presumably carrying an Australian passport, provides a clear example of this phenomenon.

The declared mission of Ms Hodge is, of course, to have a look at the current hot issue of the “ƒ”¹…”boat people’ originating from Sri Lanka, a perfectly understandable interest in current affairs with a local angle for her newspaper published in Australia.

But, is her report really news or news alone?

Ms Hodge’s report basically passes on a message from one Justin Warnakulasuriya for aid from the government of Australia, and then provides the detail about the ethnic, religious and other complexities of the group she has made contact with.

Justin, described as “ƒ”¹…”dripping in gold’, eating fried fish and drinking Johnnie Walker Black Label and wearing a traditional lungi (sarong?) is apparently the secretary of a Fisheries Society. He has already met Australian officials who have sought his help in cracking down on the thriving people-smuggling trade in return for life jackets, fishing nets and at least 200 chairs. The Australian government is also preparing to offer micro loans and community grants for job creation programmes.

Probably naƒÆ’†’¯ve about the traps the international influence peddlers set up, Justin seems to have set himself up as the ideal ‘partner’ of the type the international meddlers are seeking. He has announced that “There is a very good relationship between us and the (Australian) officials and promised, probably beyond what he could truly deliver, “a guarantee not a single person will try to reach your country by boat from Negombo.”

Ms Hodge follows up this valuable contact with our Justin with the real job she has at hand: providing an evaluation of the opportunity he is able to provide. This is where she goes to party!

Ms Hodge writes: “Populated mostly by Catholic Sinhalese fishermen and their families, the west coast has a “ƒ”¹…”rich’ history of Portuguese and Dutch settlement. A good proportion of the adult population speaks Tamil with greater fluency than Sinhalese, a product of their education in Tamil and Catholic schools. Although it is Sri Lanka’s Tamil population that has suffered the greatest discrimination at the hands of “ƒ”¹…”chauvinist Sinhalese-dominated governments’ in recent decades, most Sinhalese Christians who attempt the boat trip to Australia also claim political persecution” (emphasis added) .

Then she quotes a failed asylum seeker, another Warnakulasuriya, described as a Sinhalese Christian. He has complained that: “The Australian government thinks only Tamils have problems in this country, but we are not an original Sinhalese community,” he says. “We are discriminated against by other Sinhalese because we don’t speak a proper Sinhala language. We’re very fluent in Tamil so they think we’re also Tamil and that we helped the Tamil Tigers smuggle arms and cadres through Negombo.”

Is this news? Not when you look at it from inside! Ms Hodge’s “ƒ”¹…”news report’ represents a classic case of a modern intelligence brief based on “ƒ”¹…”open source intelligence’. The days of James Bond, agents wearing sunglasses and overcoats, carrying poison tipped umbrellas are gone. The information needs for any operation are easily met simply by finding, and the right use of, information that is “ƒ”¹…”out there’. The information gathered and disseminated by “ƒ”¹…”journalists’ like Ms Hodge is harvested by analysts employed at the embassies who pour over all newspaper reports, political speeches and other public and personal information and catalogue them systematically for use by “ƒ”¹…”the system’.

Mr Warnakulasuriya, perhaps quite innocently has provided some useful information about a little “ƒ”¹…”pocket of dissension’ that is present along the Negombo coast. The use of ethnic unhappiness is probably the method with strongest appeal to the meddlers and is likely to be increasingly employed by them in the coming months. We can only hope that the “ƒ”¹…”cargo’ does not start arriving soon.

The government needs to employ the security system wisely to ward off such threats, especially by not allowing open access by foreigners to known communities that are unique and different.

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